The Theory of Positive Disintegration

by Kazimierz Dabrowski.

Kazimierz Dabrowski, a Polish psychiatrist and psychologist,
developed the Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD) over his lifetime of clinical
and academic work.

The Theory of Positive Disintegration is a novel approach to personality
development. The theory is a forerunner of what today is called post-traumatic growth. It postulates that in some individuals, crises disrupt normal personality stability allowing an opportunity for the conscious and volitional rearrangement of the self. As the individual reviews his or her values, lower aspects of the self can be inhibited in favor of an idealization of higher goals and aspirations.

Kazimierz Dabrowski MD, PhD.

Introduction.

This site presents information about a psychological approach to personality development called the Theory of Positive Disintegration. The theory was developed by Kazimierz Dabrowski (1902 - 1980), a Polish Psychologist and Psychiatrist.

Both Dabrowski and his work have faced many obstacles. Personally, he was severely
affected by both World Wars. His work always went against the grain.
Imagine a humanistic theory promoting personal growth in the political
atmosphere of Poland in the 50s and 60s. Another problem has been language.
Dabrowski wrote in Polish and translated his works into French and Spanish.
English was the last language he learned and likely the most difficult
in terms of capturing the subtleties of his ideas. In spite of these
problems, Dabrowski persevered with his studies of human development,
developed his theory and practised Psychiatry all his life.

Dabrowski passed away in 1980 and his students went on to explore careers of their own. Many of these students continue to study and speak on the theory, most advancing a deeply personal understanding of what the theory means to them. For many, the theory has become a lifelong friend.

Since 1980, there has been a small but consistent demand for Dabrowski's
works. This demand has largely evolved in the United States where Michael
Piechowski applied his vision of the theory to gifted education. Piechowski
emphasizes overexcitability and largely disregards the other aspects
of the theory including positive disintegration and the role of psychoneurosis.
Many in education and in gifted education have looked to Dabrowski's
theory to help provide a context for their student's intense experiences.
Although a small part of the overall theory, the application to the
gifted area has generated a number of Master's and Ph.D. theses and
introduced the theory to a large audience, an audience eager to learn
more about Dabrowski and his theory. This web page was created in 1995
to help provide this information and to fulfill my commitment to Dr.
Dabrowski to try to keep his theory alive.

Videos of Dabrowski and the 2014 conference.

There are two excellent video archives of Dabrowski. When he first arrived at the University of Alberta in about 1968, Leo Mos was asked to interview him with a panel of students from the Centre for Theoretical Psychology leading to a six-hour interview. Second, one of his early students, P. J. Reese, made two half-hour movies of Dabrowski. These have been digitalized and posted to YouTube.

Be Greeted Psychoneurotics.*

Suffering, aloneness, self-doubt, sadness, inner conflict; these are our feelings that we have not learned to live with, that we have failed to appreciate, that we reject as destructive and completely negative, but in fact they are symptoms of an expanding consciousness. Dr. Kazimierz Dabrowski has spent 45 years piecing together the complete picture of the growth of the human psyche from primitive integration at birth; the person with potential for development will experience growth as a loosening of the stable psychic structure accompanied by symptoms of psychoneuroses. Reality becomes multileveled, the choices between higher and lower realms of behavior occupy our thought and mark us as human. Dabrowski called this process positive disintegration, he declares that psychoneurosis is not an illness and he insists that development does not come through psychotherapy but that psychotherapy is automatic when the person is conscious of his development.

To Dabrowski, real therapy is autopsychotherapy; it is the self being aware of the self through a long inner investigation; a mapping of the inner environment. There are no techniques to eliminate symptoms because the symptoms constitute the very psychic richness from which grow an increasing awareness of body, mind, humanity and cosmos. Dabrowski gives birth to that process if he can.

Without intense and painful introspection and reflection, development is
unlikely. Psychoneurotic symptoms should be embraced and transformed into
anxieties about human problems of an ever higher order. If psychoneuroses
continue to be classified as mental illness, then perhaps it is a sickness
better than health.

“Without passing through very difficult experiences and even something
like psychoneurosis and neurosis we cannot understand human beings and we
cannot realize our multidimensional and multilevel development toward higher
and higher levels.” Dabrowski.

2). "The propensity for changing one's internal environment and the
ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the
capacity of the individual to develop. Almost as a rule, these factors
are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction
with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety,
inhibitions, and ambivalences - all symptoms which the psychiatrist
tends to label psychoneurotic. Given a definition of mental health as
the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals
who present active development in the direction of a higher level of
personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy"
(Dabrowski, 1964, p. 112).

3). "Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic
of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality.
According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually
impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses,
without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual
conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values
(to what 'ought to be'), and without conflicts with lower level realities
as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond
with reality of higher level" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 220).

4). "Psychoneuroses 'especially those of a higher level' provide an
opportunity to 'take one's life in one's own hands'. They are expressive
of a drive for psychic autonomy, especially moral autonomy, through
transformation of a more or less primitively integrated structure. This
is a process in which the individual himself becomes an active agent
in his disintegration, and even breakdown. Thus the person finds a 'cure'
for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the
sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior
to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of
oneself and of an inner psychic transformation. One of the main mechanisms
of this process is a continual sense of looking into oneself as if from
outside, followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions
and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the
constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic
milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both
the inner and outer milieus - an individual goes through ever higher
levels of 'neuroses' and at the same time through ever higher levels
of universal development of his personality" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 4).

These quotes capture the heart of Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration. The theory describes a process of personality development - the creation of a unique, individual personality.

Most people become socialized in their early family and school experiences.
They largely accept the values and mores of society with little question
and have no internal conflict in abiding by the basic tenents of society.
In some cases, a person begins to notice and to imagine 'higher possibilities'
in life. These disparities are driven by overexcitability -- an intense
reaction to, and experience of the day-to-day stimuli of life. Eventually,
one's perception of reality becomes differentiated into a hierarchy
and all aspects of both external and internal life come to be evaluated
on a vertical continuum of 'lower versus higher.' This experience often
creates a series of deep and painful conflicts between lower, 'habitual'
perceptions and reactions based on one's heredity and environment (socialization)
and higher, volitional 'possibilities.' In the developing individual,
these conflicts may lead to disintegrations and psychoneuroses, for
Dabrowski, hallmarks of advanced growth. Eventually, through the processes
of advanced development and positive disintegration, one is able to
develop control over one's reactions and actions. Eventually, development
culminates in the inhibition and extinction of lower levels of reality
and behavior and their transcendence via the creation of a higher, autonomous
and stable ideal self. The rote acceptance of social values yields to
a critically examined and chosen hierarchy of values and aims that becomes
a unique expression of the self -- becoming one's personality ideal.

Dabrowski acknowledged the strong and primitive influence of heredity
(the first factor) and the robotic, dehumanizing (and de-individualizing)
role of the social environment (the second factor). He also described
a third factor of influence, a factor emerging from but surpassing heredity
- "its activity is autonomous in relation to the first factor (hereditary)
and the second (environmental) factor. It consists in a selective attitude
with regard to the properties of one's own character and temperament,
as well as, to environmental influences" (Dabrowski, 1973, p. 80). The
third factor is initially expressed when a person begins to resist their
lower impulses and the habitual responses characteristic of socialization.
Emerging autonomy is reflected in conscious and volitional choices toward
what a person perceives as 'higher' in their internal and external milieus.
Over time, this 'new' conscious shaping of the personality comes to
reflect an individual 'personality ideal,' an integrated hierarchy of
values describing the sense of whom one wants to be and how one wants
to live life. With the new freedom and force of the third factor, a
person can see and avoid the lower in life and transcend to higher levels.
The 'ought to be' of life can replace 'the what is.' It is important
to realize that this is not simply an actualization of oneself as is;
it involves tremendous conscious work in differentiating the higher
and lower in the self and in moving away from lower selfish and egocentric
goals toward an idealized image of how 'you ought to be.'

The idealized self is consciously constructed based on both emotional
and cognitive foundations. Emotion and cognition become integrated and
are reflected in a new approach to life -- feelings direct and shape
ideas, goals and ideals, one's ideals work to express one's feelings.
imagination is a critical component in this process -- we can literally
imagine how it ought to be and how could be in this establishes ideals
to try to attain.

Initially, people who are acting on low impulses or who are simply
robotically emulating society have little self conflict. Most conflicts
are external. During development, the clash between one's actual behavior
and environment and one's imagined ideals creates a great deal of internal
conflict. This conflict literally motivates the individual to resolve
the situation, ideally by inhibiting those aspects he or she considers
lower and by accentuating those aspects he or she considers higher.
At the highest levels, there is a new harmony of thought, emotion and
action that eliminates internal conflict. The individual is behaving
in accord with their own personality ideal and consciously derived value
structure and therefore feels no internal conflict. Often a person's
external focus shifts to 'making the world a better place.'

In describing development, Dabrowski elaborated five levels occurring
in three basic phases. The first stage, Level I, involves an integrated
but lower level expression of hereditary and social forces. Dabrowski
referred to this as a unilevel or primary level. The individual experiences
little inner conflict and is initially, largely unaware of the 'higher
possibilities of life.' Phase two is characterized by the process of
disintegration and psychoneuroses are common features of these levels
(Levels II, III and IV). The familiar security of habit is shattered
by doubts as the person comes to discover higher levels in life. The
lower versus higher continuum signals a shift to the multilevel experience
of life (Levels III and IV). The third phase, Level V, is the highest
level, second integration, characterized by the expression of one's
unique and autonomous personality.

Dabrowski, K. (1996). Multilevelness
of emotional and instinctive functions. Part 1: Theory and description
of levels of behavior. Lublin, Poland: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu
Lubelskiego. [A republication of the titles and text of the 1974 manuscript
that was the basis of Part 1 of the 1977 Dabor book. Published in English
with a new preface by Czeslaw Cekiera. 446 pages. ISBN # 83-86668-51-2.
Published in one soft cover binding along with Part 2.]

Dabrowski, K. & Piechowski, M. M. (with Rankel, M., & Amend, D. R.). (1996). Multilevelness of emotional and instinctive
functions.
Part 2: Types and Levels of Development. Lublin, Poland: Towarzystwo Naukowe
Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego. [A republication of the titles and text of the 1972 manuscript
that was the basis of Part 2 of the 1977 Dabor book. Published in English
with a new preface by Czeslaw Cekiera. 446 pages. ISBN # 83-86668-51-2.
Published in one soft cover binding with Part 1.]

* Dabrowski would not acknowledge these books after their publication, for
an explanation please see this.

Contact:

Website credits and copyrights:

The material on this site is protected by the provisions of the Copyright
Act, by Canadian laws, policies, regulations and international
agreements. Such provisions serve to identify the information source and,
in specific instances, to prohibit reproduction of materials without written
permission.